Shadowing Practice: Why It Sucks to Be a Nun (in Medieval Times) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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You're born in 14th century England.
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Your family lives in a house that smells of sweat, beer, and boiled cabbage.
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Your father drinks more ale than he keeps food in the pantry,
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and your mother works her hands raw trying to keep the children alive on prayers and scraps.
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By the time you can walk, you already understand one thing.
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Children cost money, and your family has none to spare.
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By the time you turn five, you've already learned to scrub floors.
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At seven, you help stir the cauldron while your mother mutters prayers that the porridge will stretch one more night.
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At eight, your eldest sister marries and leaves with a dowry so small the groom jokes he must have angered God.
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Your father curses their marriage for days.
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And by nine, you stop expecting childhood to feel nice.
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Your father now drinks more openly, muttering that daughters are curses disguised as babies.
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He takes your brothers to the forest for a boy's hangout disguised as archery lessons, boasting about his days on the battlefield.
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When he returns, he pats your cheek, calling you the pretty one.
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It earns you extra chores, like don't go outside alone, don't speak to men.
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You add that to your already long list of do's and don'ts.
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A few years pass, and you turn 12.
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Now you are so eye -catching that your father has given you a new name the death of me.
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Every day, suitors line up, hoping to get your hand in marriage, with some even being your father's age.
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Your father, too, would love to have one less mouth to feed, but in 14th century England, everybody is trying to survive.
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And in your case, the suitors are trying to use marriage as an excuse to extort a significant dowry from your father.
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Your father laughs and curses them out, obviously drunk.
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They leave, but never for long.
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Then one day, your father hears that the local convent is taking in new nuns.
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The church visits, reminding him that the convent accepts girls as gifts to God, especially pious pretty ones.
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Within a week, your father makes his choice.
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The church promises him enough support for the winter, Enough support that he asks if they need more girls.
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He signs your name on a parchment you never see.
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The day you're taken, they shear your hair before a crowd.
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You tear up as your locks fall to the dirt, like pieces of your life separating from you.
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Women murmur blessings.
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Men smirk while your mother cries silently in the crowd.
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You're taken to the convent, and it looks peaceful from the outside white stone, a tidy courtyard, smoke curling from the kitchen chimney.
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They give you sets of clothes called a habit.
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Safe to say, it'll stick to you like a bad habit.
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You expect a welcome of quiet prayers and gentle sisters, maybe even the warmth of shared faith.
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Instead, the doors close behind you like a jail gate.
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Your first morning in the convent begins with the bell at 4 a .m.
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The sound cleaves your dreams in half.
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A novice kicks your palate and whispers, Up.
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If you're late, she'll make you kneel on salt.
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You learn quickly who she is.
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The abbess.
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A woman carved from frost and scripture, who believes obedience grows only where comfort dies.
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That same day, you scrub floors until your fingers bleed, cold stones sucking heat from your bones.
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Meals are bowls of thin gruel.
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Always cold, always too little.
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You watch priests and seminarians across the courtyard eating warm bread, salted meat, winter pears.
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One passes you as he blesses your labor, but never lifts a hand to help.
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He calls it sacrifice.
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You call it hunger.
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In the abbey, the elder nuns enforce silence with zeal.
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One pulls your ear until it tears, because you've breathed too loudly during prayer.
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Another confiscates the extra crust a kitchen girl quietly handed you.
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Gluttony, she scolds, even as her own robes bulge with stolen comforts.
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The hierarchy becomes clear.
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Abbas at the top, elder nuns below her, novices at the bottom.
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And you beneath even them.
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A charity offering from a drunken father.
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A girl marked as trouble simply for arriving unwanted.
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Your days soon blur into ritualized exhaustion.
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Kneeling until your knees bruise purple.
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Fasting until you see stars.
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Scrubbing footprints you didn't leave.
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Confessing sins you didn't commit.
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One night, while lying on straw that smells of mold.
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You whisper a question you don't dare ask aloud.
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Is this God's will?
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Or just human cruelty dressed in holy robes?
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You don't know yet, but your body is already learning the answer.
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Years pass, and you turn 15.
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And just when you thought things couldn't get worse, a decree comes from Rome.
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The abbess gathers everyone in the refectory to read the Pope's ruling.
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Strict enclosure, the new law of Christendom.
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Nuns are to be sealed from the world, to prevent temptation, to preserve purity, to protect the brides of Christ.
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No leaving the convent, no touching the outside world, no family, no windows that open fully,
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and no wandering in the orchard without permission.
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The older nuns bow their heads in acceptance.
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The younger ones look like candles snuffed out. And you?
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You just feel something inside you wither.
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In the nunnery, the air grows still.
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Girls begin to whisper that other convents across Europe are rebelling, some trying to escape.
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Then you hear the stories.
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A nun in York, Joan of Leeds,
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faked her death and made a dummy of her own body so she could flee to a man she loved.
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Another nun ran off with her lover wearing his cloak.
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Another stripped off her habit at the gate and vanished into the night.
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Their stories spread like illicit scripture among the novices.
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You meet one such rebel in the making.
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Sister Eleanor, barely older than you.
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Teeth always clenched from holding back tears.
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She confesses that her family lied to get rid of her.
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Her calling was forged by her brother to avoid splitting the inheritance.
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She wants out.
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Not for lust.
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Not for sin.
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Just for air.
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You promise to help her.
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The next night, you distract the porter while she slips out wearing a laywoman's gown smuggled from the laundry.
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You pray she makes it farther than the ones who were caught.
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She does.
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The next morning, the abbess calls you forward.
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She knows.
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They always know.
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They accuse you of aiding sin, corrupting holiness, endangering souls.
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Your punishment is public.
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Fasting, whipping, and kneeling on cold stone until your legs tremble.
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As the rod cracks your back, you think back to your actions and wonder if it was worth it.
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Not about helping Eleanor.
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You'd do that again in a heartbeat.
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Your question is to yourself.
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Was it worth it to stay for your father's sake?
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You know that if you had run, the coven won't keep their end of the deal anymore.
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So you look at the barred windows and realize, escape is a miracle.
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Survival is the punishment.
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Soon they decide whipping isn't enough.
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The abbess places a wooden scourge in your shaking hands and orders you to finish the punishment yourself.
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Strike until the sin leaves you, she says.
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You try once.
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Twice.
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But the sisters surrounding you chant harder.
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And soon the blows land without rhythm.
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Without breath.
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Without mercy.
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The leather cuts your shoulders.
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Then your arms.
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Then your thighs.
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Warm blood blooms through your habit, sticking cloth to skin.
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You collapse twice.
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They haul you upright.
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A penitent must stand, the abbess reminds you.
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By the time you fall for the last time, you no longer feel pain, just wringing emptiness.
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And in that hollow space, the truth finally breaks through.
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None of this is God.
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These are men's rules, men's punishments, men's invented sins.
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Your body is merely the altar on which they prove their authority.
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And as you think they'll haul you upright again, a priest arrives, robes rustling like a judge.
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You think he'll increase your penance.
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Instead, he kneels, lifts your chin, and murmurs that he will intercede on your behalf.
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He then pulls the abbess to the side as they whisper.
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You don't know what he says, but before long, the abbess stomps away.
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The priest looks at you and then smiles, telling you that everything has been settled.
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You are soon hauled off for your wounds to be treated.
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Fever, torn skin and bruised ribs keep you in the infirmary for weeks.
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It takes you a month to finally walk again.
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When you get out, you get a message that the priest wants to see you.
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So you go to his quarters in the rectory to thank him for his help.
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But when you see him, you have a feeling that your thanks isn't what he wants.
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He moves closer.
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You mutter an apology and move to leave.
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But he pins you to the wall, telling you he wants more.
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It is at this moment you realize that his mercy came with a price.
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You learn then, in this holy prison, salvation is just another word for possession.
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You resist at first, hands stiffen, head down.
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But he reminds you of your scars from punishment.
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So you freeze.
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And then you obey.
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One by one, your habit gets stripped away.
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You tell yourself that it's nothing, that it'll end.
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But a sharp jolt of pain makes you scream, and you just can't help counting every second as the act transpires.
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When he's done, you want to curse at him, but his glare makes your voice falter,
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so you just whimper that his action was against the church, and he says with conviction,
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I am the church, and assigns you to himself for counsel.
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The longer the priest keeps you under his guidance, the more you see the convent's true anatomy.
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Not a house of God, but a machine built on fear, money, and secrecy.
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While he summons you under the guise of spiritual correction, forcing obedience through threats and bruised warnings,
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the abbess's eyes toward you sharpens into open hostility.
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Not because she wishes to protect you, but because you have become a liability.
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A girl marked by a priest's interest threatens her control, her hierarchy, her delicate arrangement with the men who fund the convent.
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You learn quickly how power flows here.
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The abbess, who preaches piety in the mornings, negotiates land agreements in the afternoons, manipulating donations, leveraging noble families,
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and hiding debts behind layers of ritual.
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The same cloister that preaches enclosure opens its door wide when wealthy nobles arrive.
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They treat the convent like a private lodge, bringing servants, feasts, and gossip.
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Some stay for weeks, their presence disrupting the silence rule entirely.
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And still, the abbess bows to them, smiling through the incense smoke.
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It is in these moments, carrying wine, cleaning after noble banquets,
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listening from corners, that you learn how many girls around were also victims to him, even some elder nuns.
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Your own suffering at the priest's hands becomes a secret everyone pretends not to know.
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The abbess resents you for it.
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The priest insists your silence proves devotion, and other nuns avoid your eyes.
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Not out of cruelty, but fear.
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They know what happens to girls who draw the wrong kind
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of notice in a place where sin is whatever powerful men say it is.
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For the next few months, your life becomes a routine of abuse and loneliness.
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The routine breaks with a faint sickness one morning.
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Nothing alarming at first.
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Hunger and exhaustion has ruled your body for years, so weakness is familiar.
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But when your belly begins to swell, your breath catches in your throat.
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You know immediately whose shadow hangs over you.
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And you know the convent would never believe the truth.
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Whispers spread before you even understand what they are saying.
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Novices stare at your midsection.
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Older nuns cross themselves as if warding off a curse.
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The abbess summons you with a look that could flay flesh from bone.
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A child, she says, circling you like a judge at sentencing.
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Proof of your corruption.
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You try to speak, to plead your innocence.
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But she silences you.
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You look around and see that she isn't alone.
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The priest behind it all now stands beneath the crucifix among the judges.
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His expression is smooth, holy, untouched.
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He lifts a hand toward the other judges.
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She invites temptation, he says.
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And that's all it takes.
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The narrative is sealed.
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Your body becomes a courtroom, and your baby is evidence of a crime against you the convent doesn't want to acknowledge.
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The next Sunday, they drag you before the villagers gathered for mass.
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Bells toll as though announcing an execution.
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They force you to kneel on the stone steps, belly heavy, knees burning.
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The priest demands your confession.
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You deny wrongdoing.
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He demands it again. And again.
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At last, with the crowd watching, you break.
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Not because you lied, but because truth has no use here.
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You repeat the sins they feed you.
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Lust.
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Pride.
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Sorcery.
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Disobedience.
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Gasps wrinkle through the congregation like applause.
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Then comes the sentence.
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Banishment.
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Excommunication.
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Erasure.
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You go back home since you have nowhere else to go.
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But your father slams the door when you beg for shelter.
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You shame us, he slurs.
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You earned this.
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With nothing but disgrace clinging to your skin, you step back into the world, not free, just discarded.
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A woman condemned simply for surviving the sins of a bad man.
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You go to the outskirts.
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It is the only place that doesn't care if you stay or not.
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It is scattered of shacks, broken carts, and people's society spits out like rotten gruel.
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Months later, you give birth alone in the outskirts, in a drafty hut made of stolen boards and mud.
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You scream into straw as the contractions hit you like stones so the village won't hear.
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One after another, you persevere alone as there is no midwife, no sister, no mother to guide you.
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Just you, the straw pallet, and the sharp memory of the medical lessons forced into you at the convent.
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Lessons meant for tending the sick, not bringing life into the world.
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When your baby finally slips into your trembling hands, purple and slick with blood,
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you press him to your chest and whisper the only blessing you still believe in, live, even if the world hates you.
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You raise your son here, far from church bells and judgmental stairs.
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Every day after that is survival.
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You steal scraps, gather herbs, barter labor for stale bread.
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You realize raising your son is hard.
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Harder than the convent.
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Harder than exile.
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He grows fast.
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He's also always hungry.
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Always curious.
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Always watching the world that rejects him.
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You teach him everything you know.
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How to boil water before drinking.
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How to mend torn skin.
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How to run when men grow cruel.
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Years pass like this.
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Rough and graceless.
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You're 27 when the whispers start.
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Talks of the plague.
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First in the city.
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Then in the villages.
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Then creeping along the roads.
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Farmers bar their doors.
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Monks flee their posts.
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Dogs starve beside dead masters.
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The world collapses in weeks.
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You try to shield your son, rationing food, boiling herbs, praying old prayers you don't believe.
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But the fever finds you anyway.
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Your joints swell, your skin darkens, your breath wheezes.
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You know the signs.
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You've tended to the dying before.
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He cries at your bedside, begging you to stay awake.
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You tell him to leave you, and not come near you.
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You fear he will catch the plague too.
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He never listens.
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Then one morning, you see a small black swelling blooming on his neck, and your heart breaks in two.
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You hold him close, even as illness gnaws your lungs.
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You say your last prayer as a whisper into his hair.
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Survive.
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Then one morning, your lungs simply stop biting.
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You die quietly.
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No miracle.
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No candlelit vigil.
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By nightfall, the plague cart comes.
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The collectors don't ask your name.
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They don't care that you once belonged to the convent, or that your life was chewed apart by vows you never chose.
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They lift you by your wrists and ankles.
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Toss you onto stiff bodies already buzzing with flies.
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Your head strikes a stranger's ribs.
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No one notices.
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You are rolled through the village you were exiled from, past doors that never opened for you.
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The cart rattles to a mass pit.
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There, they dump all of you like rubbish.
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No shroud.
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No prayer.
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No marker.
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Just a mass pit of decomposing victims of the Black Death.
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Centuries turn.
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Your name dissolves.
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Your story thins to nothing.
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In the archives, monks copy hymns praising holy maidens, obedient nuns, and radiant virgins.
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Historians celebrate abbesses who managed estates, anchoresses who chose their walls, mystics whose visions became literature.
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But not you.
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Never you.
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Your agony lives only in the silences, in the gaps between monastery records,
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in the unspoken truth behind enclosure laws as unrecorded screams.
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In the end, your life becomes what the church preferred women to be, absent.
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And your son?
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I guess we'll never know.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Why It Sucks to Be a Nun”. This video has 309 sentences and 2879 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:57. The speaker talks at a steady 137 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 74% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| nun noun | /nʌn/ | A member of a Christian religious community of women who live by certain vows and usually wear a habit, (Roman Catholicism, specifically) those living together… |
| whisper verb | /ˈ(h)wɪspɚ/ | To speak softly or under one's breath, so as to be heard only by one near at hand; to utter words without sonant breath; to talk without that vibration of the… |
| prayer noun | /pɹɛɚ/ | A practice of communicating with one's God, or with some spiritual entity. |
| priest noun | /ˈpɹiːst/ | A religious clergyman (clergywoman, clergyperson) who is trained to perform services or sacrifices at a church or temple. |
| silence noun | /ˈsaɪ̯ləns/ | The absence of any sound. |
| tear verb | /tɛɹ/ | To rend (a solid material) by holding or restraining in two places and pulling apart, whether intentionally or not; to destroy or separate. |
| habit noun | /ˈhæb.ɪt/ | An action performed on a regular basis. |
| curse noun | /kɝs/ | A supernatural detriment or hindrance; a bane. |
| sin noun | /ˈsɪn/ | A violation of divine will or religious law. |
| punishment noun | /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/ | The act (action) or process of punishing, imposing and/or applying a sanction, typically by an authority or a person in authority (for example: a parent or… |
| lesson noun | /ˈlɛs.ən/ | A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided. |
| steal verb | /stiːl/ | To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it. |
| arrive verb | /əˈɹaɪv/ | To reach; to get to a certain place. |
| elder noun | /ˈɛldɚ/ | A small tree, Sambucus nigra, having white flowers in a cluster, and edible purple berries. |
| straw noun | /stɹɔ/ | A dried stalk of a cereal plant. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| break through verb | To gain popularity. | |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. | |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| hang over verb | To be threatening, to be imminent. | |
| hold back verb | To act with reserve; to contain one's full measure or power. | |
| line up verb | /laɪnˈʌp/ | To align; to put in alignment; to put in correct adjustment for smooth running. |
| look around verb | To inspect a building or area. | |
| run off with verb | To steal or abscond with. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- If you're late, she'll make you kneel on salt.
- Scrubbing footprints you didn't leave.
- Confessing sins you didn't commit.
- You whisper a question you don't dare ask aloud.
- Was it worth it to stay for your father's sake?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If you're late, she'll make · if you had run, the coven won't keep |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be sealed · was forged · were caught |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've already learned · has given · you've breathed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | ones who were · men who fund |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 34 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, isn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: beneath /bɪˈniːθ/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/, thin /ˈθɪn/, smooth /smuːð/, leather /ˈlɛðɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: punishment /ˈpʌnɪʃmənt/, enclosure /ɛnˈkloʊʒəɹ/, sharp /ʃɑɹp/, temptation /ˌtɛmpˈteɪʃən/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/
- Long words — get the stress right: hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, execution /ˌɛk.sɪˈkjuː.ʃən/, liability /laɪəˈbɪlɪti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like nun, whisper, prayer.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.